November 2, 2009
I cannot stop watching this!! Also, I cannot stop laughing. The writers of “The Office” are effing brilliant.
Ed Helms (“‘Nard Dog” – dancing in the elevator) and BJ Novak (“Mr. Understood” – with that wink and crotch grab)…. hee hee hee ahahaha hahahahah!
Category Music, TV | Tags: | 1 Comment
February 25, 2009
Fisher Price tape recorder: Small, tan, portable, and practically destruction-proof!
The Police’s Synchronicity was the very first album that I owned on cassette tape. I used to listen to it at night on my brother’s Fisher Price tape player while falling asleep. I found a picture of that very tape player online and it got me thinking about the early albums I owned (is “album” the proper term for it if it’s not on vinyl?) Synchronicity was the first cassette tape I had (given to me by an aunt, I think… I was unaware of The Police before owning this) and I LOVED IT. It remains one of my all-time favorite records. I also often listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band while falling asleep. I had several Blondie albums on vinyl, but not on cassette. And once I walked up to the Albertson’s grocery store near my house, where they had a small selection of popular records and tapes, and used my allowance money to buy Van Halen’s 1984. I got in trouble for that. My parents didn’t think that a band who would put a baby smoking cigarettes on their album cover would be a good influence on me. I can’t remember the details, but somehow I got to keep the tape.
I used this tape recorder and a 90 minute blank cassette tape to record the audio from Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail off of the TV, thus allowing me to play it over and over and over and over and over again, memorizing all the dialog, like a good little nerd-in-training.
Yesterday I was leafing through a magazine and found an advertising insert card promoting travel and tourism in Texas. Two things caught my eye. One: “You could win a fabulous trip to Houston, TX!” I lived in Houston, and visited frequently when my parents lived there, and I can say with all honesty that Houston is one of the last places on Earth that anyone should want to win a fabulous trip to. Two: Remember those red cellophane decoders from the 1970s and 80s? You’d put the red cellophane strip over an indeterminate patch of red and blue squiggles to reveal a secret message. This advert contains a Texas-shaped red cellophane window, and instructs you to go to their website and hold up the cellophane to your screen to see if you’ve won the aforementioned “fabulous” trip.
The times, they have a-changed.
Category Memories, Music | Tags: | 2 Comments
February 19, 2009
Kathryn sings it!
Kathryn recently joined a band called The Vintage Vibes, a 40s/50s rock/swing band. She’s amazing! You can listen to a few of her songs on the band’s MySpace page.
Tuesday night we watched her perform at a blues bar in Arlington (that’s a nice loooong drive). It was really more of a rehearsal than a bona fide performance, but we really wanted to see her nonetheless. We brought Jamie, since we’re really not at a point where we are prepared to leave him with a babysitter for more than an hour or two (and besides Grandma and Auntie Rachel, we don’t really have anyone to sit for him yet anyway). It was too loud and smoky to take him inside, so we switched off staying in the car with him. I’m still counting it as his first trip to a bar, though. :)
Kathryn was absolutely fantastic! She looked gorgeous in that blue dress and man oh man, can she ever sing. I really think that this style of music suits her voice better than anything I’ve ever heard her sing before. She sings it like she means it!
Definitely go to see her if you get a chance — I imagine there might even be dancing! When she has a schedule of shows available, I’ll post it here.
Category Friends, Jamieson, Music | Tags: | 1 Comment
January 15, 2009
I sing traditional lullabies to Jamieson, but also more modern stuff. The thing I’ve realized, in trying to find suitable songs to sing to him, is that traditional lullabies don’t have many breaks for instrumentation. You pretty much sing each line one right after the other. Not so with modern songs. If I take a break to wait for the instrumental parts to be over (even if it’s just half a measure), Jamie can get fussy. So I run all the lines together and it just sounds WEIRD.
I sure wish I could sing like Doc does. His voice, as I’ve mentioned before, is so rich and full and velvety smooth. I could listen to him ALL DAY LONG. Jamie finds it very comforting, I think, and so do I. My voice is not awful, and I can carry a tune rather well, but it’s not the same as when daddy sings to baby. I guess mommy’s softer higher voice has its merits in Jamie’s mind, though.
Jamie’s favorite: Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel. Always sung by his daddy, in that lovely deep rumbly voice. Often effective at calming a meltdown, especially when Doc sings it in full voice (read: awesomely powerful). Doc sang this to me, as well, when I was having awful labor pains. I love that the three of us have this connection to this song. Me peripherally, but still.
You Are My Sunshine. You are my sunshine, my Jamie sunshine (or my blue-eyed sunshine)…
Darling Clementine, such a sad song about a miner’s daughter who drowned. I think my mom sang it to me when I was little. It’s melancholy and I find it comforting. I looked up all the lyrics this morning, because I realized that I only know it phoenetically from when I was little. “Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.” I was pretty dead-on, phoenetically, actually.
Birdhouse in Your Soul, They Might Be Giants. Another one Doc uses a lot. My name is blue canary, one note spelled L-I-T-E!
Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd (yes, I sing a song about shooting heroin to my child) (yes, I know it’s about much more than drugs :)
Alison, Elvis Costello. I change “Alison” to “Jamieson” and really I only sing the chorus.
Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
Help, The Beatles
Manamana, from The Muppet Show. I often substitute words, such as “Banana bread” or “Phenomenon” or “It’s Ramadan.” Kathryn suggests “Gulab jamun” (an Indian dessert, squishy little super-sweet cake balls floating in sugar syrup), and that works well too.
The theme song from Pinky and the Brain. By the dawning of the sun, they’ll take over the world!
Brainstem, from Pinky and the Brain. Nothing wrong with teaching cranial anatomy to a 5-week-old, right?
New this morning: Doc discovered that Nine to Five, by Dolly Parton, turned Mr. Cry-Cry Pants into Mr. Sleepy Pants, when accompanied by bouncing.
Category Baby, Jamieson, Music | Tags: | 6 Comments
July 23, 2008
The Canadian rock power trio RUSH appeared on The Colbert Report last Wednesday, performing an extended version of their hit “Tom Sawyer” that reached into the beginning Thursday’s show. Before they took the stage, Alex, Geddy, and Neil accepted our challenge to perform “Tom Sawyer” as part of the video game Rock Band. Check it out!
We’ve played Rock Band before and found it pretty strange in how it rates your playing, especially on vocals (as Doc and his beautiful voice can attest). So now that we know it failed Rush at their own song, I don’t feel so bad anymore.
Category Music | Tags: | No Comments
July 15, 2008
so if you take,
Category Baby, Music | Tags: | No Comments
June 15, 2008
We got tickets to see Laurie Anderson! She’ll be in Dallas in October, performing a new piece called “Homeland,” which deals with issues of war and loss of freedom in a post-9/11 America. I’m so excited!! This will be the fifth (I think) time that I’ve seen her perform; I got to meet her after one of her shows and she signed my program. I was too nervous to even say anything to her! I discovered her music in 1987, when I was but a sophomore in high school. This was, of course, the era of 80s pop and hair metal bands, so being a Laurie Anderson fan was just another mark against me in the high school social strata, but I didn’t care.
I’m 16 weeks into this pregnancy and feeling LOADS better. I can eat almost like a normal person these days, although the amounts are still small. I still have a strong aversion to turkey and chicken, and other white meats. I can eat things like beef and sausage in small amounts, but my diet is largely vegetarian now, which I am completely happy with. I am so happy to like food again. I don’t think I’m really craving anything. I wonder if I will. I am eating a lot of fruit, especially berries, peaches, and apples. Fruit was one of the only things that was kind to my tummy during my weeks and weeks of nausea. I ate so much applesauce then, though, that I’m not sure I ever want to eat it again!
But, must not eat too much fruit. Must watch sugar intake. I don’t think I’m in danger of developing gestational diabetes, but one cannot be too careful.
I have a sonogram scheduled for this week. As far as I know, everything’s going well. I don’t think it’s obvious I’m pregnant yet, but it might appear that I’m getting a tad chubby in the belly. “Katy must really be hitting the snack machine at work a lot!” Not really. My work peeps have been made aware of my “delicate condition” now (I love saying that phrase, it’s hilarious), and one very sweet co-worker from down the hall regularly brings me stacks of baby books and magazines that she read during her pregnancy. VERY helpful!
I can still wear almost all of my regular clothes. Last week I bought a Bella Band, a thick and stretchy tube of fabric that you can wear over unbuttoned pants to keep them up, and covers the midriff if your shirt rides too high; it makes it look like you’re wearing layers. Since I’m nearly six feet tall, it is hard to find shirts that are long enough to meet the waistband of my pants anyway, so this Bella Band might prove useful even when I’m not pregnant.
I have no idea when I’ll need to start shopping for new clothes. Hopefully a lot of my regular clothes are cut in such a way that I can wear them through most of my pregnancy. We’ll see how that goes.
I had a couple of minor emotional breakdowns this weekend. It’s been awhile and the tears needed to flow, I guess. I cried a lot for “Bertram,” which is what we jokingly named our little miscarriage back in January. It still makes me sad sometimes. The rational part of me knows that it wasn’t really a baby yet; it was just a lump of cells that didn’t get very far. But sometimes I can’t help but cry for the lost potential. Doc hates seeing me sad. I think he might be better at putting all of that into perspective than I am. When my emotions get the better of me, I can’t even think straight, let alone put anything into perspective.
I’m feeling pretty useless a lot lately. I know I’m doing the difficult work of cooking a baby here, but it doesn’t feel like work. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually DOING anything. My body’s just on autopilot, doing it for me. I don’t have to think about the steps, or worry about whether I’m doing it correctly. So it doesn’t really feel like work, if that makes sense, and it’s hard for me to cut myself a break because it feels like laziness when I do slack off. I think I’m pretty good now at listening to my body, and following its cues, so I’m certainly never doing anything that would put myself or the baby in any sort of danger; but letting other people do things for me that I know damn well I can still do myself, feels like laziness and like I’m taking unfair advantage of the situation.
I’ll get over it, I know. There’s a lot of big changes I’m trying to adjust to, and I don’t always adjust perfectly right away. Like letting Doc carry the 40-pound box of kitty litter up the stairs: I know it was a good idea to let him do it, even though I feel like I can still easily carry it myself, but I was all emotional at the time and got mad. Because I’m feeling so useless. Getting mad was a dumb reaction, I know this now. He’s excellent at providing for and protecting me, and his instincts have really kicked in lately. I have resolved to let him do things for me more, even when I know damn well I can still do them myself. There is no sense in both of us feeling useless.
Now that my queasiness has backed off, I’m taking advantage of times when I feel good and have energy, to get little lists of minor things done. Like today I accomplished an impressive array of household chores. I wasn’t even really tired today, which is unusual. I’ve been going to bed early (usually before 11, which is early for me) and getting about 8 hours of sleep most nights. I do get up to pee at least once every night, and often I have insomnia after coming back to bed and it takes me an hour or two to get back to sleep. Annoying, but probably helping to prepare me for the interrupted sleep of a new parent.
And I cooked dinner tonight! A full-on dinner, for the first time in probably three months. I made oven-baked chicken breasts, coated in bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and spices; green beans sauteed with garlic and yellow tomatoes, garlic bread, and a chocolate zucchini cake. Must get in vegetables any way I can! I couldn’t eat the chicken, of course, although I did take a few small bites in order to enjoy the crispy coating. Doc liked the chicken to the point where he said he’d eat the leftover piece that I didn’t eat tomorrow for lunch! That’s saying a lot, seeing as how there are very few leftovers he’ll eat.
I saw the world’s ugliest pickup truck today. I couldn’t help but notice it as its stereo was rattling my windows at a stoplight. It was black, with a peach hood and roof, and a stripe of purple flames all along both sides. I am pretty sure those color choices were on purpose.
We went to dinner last night with Kathryn and Brett for her birthday. Happy Birthday, Kat! Ziziki’s (yummy Mediterranean food) and then to Whole Foods for a delectable selection of desserts from their enormous pastry case. Unfortunately I started feeling icky and couldn’t eat my teeny key lime and lemon meringue tarts. They were just as good the second day :) The pastry guy gave us each a loaf of fresh French bread, on the house. It pays to shop at closing time.
It is almost 10 now and I am going to do a bit of yoga before bed. I would like to start going 2-3 times a week again at lunch time. Hopefully they are running classes throughout the summer; I need to check into it this week. I love paying $10 a month for my gym and getting all the yoga classes I want for that price!
So, in closing: Here is an article with some freaking awesome costumes for babies! Some are not so awesome (poop on head “costume,” for instance), but this lobster is just the cutest thing in the universe!
Category Music, Pregnancy | Tags: | 2 Comments
February 12, 2008
I realized tonight that I’ve only made three short posts in the past three weeks that AREN’T about my miscarriage. Part of me is tired of thinking about it, and I am sure that my readers, all two of you, are tired of reading about it too, so I’m going to try to move on to other topics now for the most part. I can’t promise there won’t be the occasional “woe is me” post, but I am trying not to let the woe engulf me and writing about normal things will be an exercise in getting my head out of that sadness.
So. Onward!
Last.fm
Doc turned me on to this cool site called Last.fm. It’s a free service (similar to Pandora) that keeps track of what music you listen to, streams music that it thinks you’ll like on your own personal “radio stations” (and does a darn good job, by the way, of choosing music that I like), connects you with people that have similar tastes, and introduces you to independent artists and music you may not have heard before.
Try it! It’s very easy to install and operate. It imports your iTunes listening history and then is able to custom-tailor “radio stations” for you.
The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
I absolutely love Cracked.com’s lists. The people who write them are hilariously witty and razor sharp. Even if I don’t have any interest in the topic, although I usually do, I still read them for the quality of writing. Here are just a few choice quotes from a recent article about six adorably cute animals that can fucking kill you. This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
If animals could talk, they would spend most of their time calling us dicks and telling us to get off their land. The traits we think of as “cute” are often simply tricks animals have developed to get tourists to throw them food.
There is no way you could look at a big, fat, happy, squishy, huggable hippo and not think, “If she could talk like a human, she would sound just like Jada Pinkett Smith and be oh so sassy.” You would totally name her Sassybaskets and she would be your tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing, strut-walking pal for life. Just you and Sassybaskets against the world! Look out, New York, here comes Sassybaskets!
The platypus is mother nature’s way of saying, “I made this thing out of spare parts I found on the workshop floor, and it can still fucking cripple you.”
It turns out swans are now and have always been vicious, mean little motherfuckers who will not hesitate to snap your fingers off one by one for daring to pollute its presence. And then going off to laugh with all their friends about what a huge loser you are.
Orange Almond Cake with Caramel Sauce
A few weeks ago I made a delicious cake. It is in no way low-calorie or low-fat, and it tastes utterly decadent. Here’s the recipe:
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1/3 cup light sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-3/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 ounces almond paste, crumbled
Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon rum extract
1/3 cup orange marmalade
Preheat oven to 350.
Lightly butter a 9″-round bundt cake pan; set aside.
With a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the apricot preserves, sour cream, and vanilla extract; beat for 1 minute more.
Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt; lightly fold into the batter along with the almond paste.
Spread batter evenly into the prepared pan . Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the center of the cake is firm when the pan is lightly tapped.
For sauce:
In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat for a few minutes more. Drizzle over cake slices.
Recent Activities
Last Friday night we went to an art show and dinner with Kathryn and Brett. Even though I didn’t particularly care for most of the art (a student show, watercolors), it was nice to get out and do something cultural with friends. I don’t know why we don’t do that more often. Recent events have got me thinking a lot about priorities and free-time activities, and I’ve realized that I miss actively making art and actively going out to look at other peoples’ art. I want to start doing that more often. We need to force ourselves to find the time…. maybe by just writing on the calendar what we are going to do, and then sticking to it. For someone who’s supposed to be an artist, I sure avoid art a lot of the time. I don’t understand myself sometimes.
Category Art, Food, Music, Nature | Tags: | No Comments
December 6, 2007
As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a science of empathy takes on new dimension. Sacks’s latest book is Musicophilia, an exploration of the musical mind. Sacks describes a series of ordinary people, with extraordinary neurological conditions, who were transformed by music.
Category Music, Sociology | Tags: | No Comments
November 15, 2007
“The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational ’80s Songs” is, without a doubt, one of the most hilarious things I’ve read in a long time!!
Robert Brockway describes Kenny Loggins’ “Highway To The Danger Zone:”
“Danger Zone” is comprised of entirely guitar riffs and vague references to machines and speed. He did not settle for a lesser concept. He put you on a highway: the fastest, straightest route possible directly to an entire zone that is nothing but danger. There was no “Parkway to the Naughty Territories,” or “Off Ramp to Risky Town,” or even “Scenic Route Through Fistfight County.”
And, of Foreigner’s “Jukebox Hero”…
If hearing “just one guitar” while standing outside a venue in the pouring rain can cause an innocent farm boy to mutate into a vulgar, screeching, musical demi-god, imagine hearing 17 guitars on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm! You could instantaneously transform altar boys all across the heartland into 80-foot tall rock ogres, shredding on nuclear guitars and ejaculating fiery magma into the horrified faces of America’s enemies. Serve your country, Foreigner. Give a little back for once.
You may be in imminent danger of Bon Jovi poisoning:
One minute he’s lamenting “Sometimes you tell the day/By the bottle that you drink/And times when you’re all alone all you do is think.” Then almost immediately extolling that he’s rocked all those aforementioned faces. Incidentally, if you have had your face rocked at any point by Bon Jovi, please seek prompt medical attention.
Read more here! It’s long but completely worth it, AND it includes links to music videos!
Category Music | Tags: | 1 Comment
November 13, 2007
Saturday evening, Doc made me laugh so hard I literally fell out of my chair! I was doing some work on my computer and listening to Genesis’ Fly on the Windshield, and he waltzed into my office and began performing interpretive dance to the song. At the very end, when he mimicked the fly stuck on the windshield, wide-eyed and one wing flapping in the wind, I completely lost it and doubled over laughing, lost my balance, and slid to the floor in hysterics.
I love just laughing like that. He makes me laugh all the time. It’s great.
Speaking of things on the windshield, this morning while driving down Skillman at 45 miles per hour, a little gecko appeared on my windscreen, fully alive and clinging on for dear life. I don’t know if he’d been sleeping in the windshield-wiper area (which is full of leaves, as we park the car under a tree), or if he dropped from a passing tree and just happened to land on my windscreen, but in any case he looked terrified—to the extent that geckos can—and every few seconds, buffeted by the wind, he slid another inch or two up the windscreen. I was in heavy traffic and couldn’t immediately stop, but kept saying “Just hang on a few more seconds, little dude!” I pulled into the first parking lot I could find in hopes that he was still attached to the car, but alas, he was gone. Poor little guy. Hopefully he flew off and landed lightly on the pavement, and was able to scramble off the road before being smooshed. I’m telling myself that’s what happened, and that he’ll go on to lead a long and fruitful life, making many baby geckos to help control the mosquito population.
Category Music, Nature | Tags: | No Comments
November 10, 2007
Doc’s recent post about the greatest albums ever recorded has got me thinking. He and I are in agreement on the greatest record ever made (Genesis’ Lamb Lies Down On Broadway…. just an amazing piece of art). We started wondering, what are some other “perfect” albums, ones without a bad song on them? Albums that you listen to straight through without skipping any of the songs.
Here’s a few I can think of. I’m sure I’ve missed some. I’d love to hear your picks, too.
The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Cowboy Junkies: The Trinity Session
The Cure: Disintegration
The Cure: Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Dead Can Dance: Spiritchaser
Depeche Mode: Black Celebration
Depeche Mode: Violator
Genesis: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Laurie Anderson: Mister Heartbreak
Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine
Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral
Payne’s Grey: Pull It Down
Peter Gabriel: Security
Peter Gabriel: III (Melting Face)
Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd: The Wall
The Police: Synchronicity (yes, even “Mother,” LOL)
Sting: The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Tears for Fears: Songs from the Big Chair
They Might Be Giants: Flood
This Mortal Coil: Filigree and Shadow
U2: The Unforgettable Fire
I really struggled over whether to include Genesis’ A Trick of the Tail. It’s amazing except for one song that I just can’t listen to all that often. Just one measly little song… the rest of the album is completely amazing though.
Category Music | Tags: | 1 Comment
Copyright © 2012 Something Shiny Disorder
